The cancer care advocate has gone to the Ombudsman after Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand (HNZ) provided incomplete information about waiting times, which have been notoriously bad in the Southern region in recent years, as detailed in a recent Health and Disability Commission report.
"You can’t fix what you can’t see; maybe that is the point," she said.
HNZ confirmed to the Otago Daily Times that it no longer published data on the percentage of patients who receive their first treatment within a 62-day target, but said the data was still collected and was available if requested under the Official Information Act.
It apologised to Ms Vining for not providing the data as initially requested, and said this week it was working to provide the information.
Last month, Ms Vining requested information on the percentage of patients who received treatment within the 31 and 62-day government-prescribed targets, for each former district health board area within the past 12 months.
Earlier this month she received a response stating that information on the targets, or faster cancer treatment (FCT) indicators, were publicly available, with internet links provided to see data for previous quarters.
Figures for the most recent quarter were also withheld on the grounds they would soon be publicly available.
The most up-to-date link did not provide a data breakdown, instead providing figures combining the entire South Island.
On questioning, HNZ acknowledged the link did not contain the level of data requested, and said it had now provided Ms Vining with the correct link to view the information on its website.
However, this new format only provided a breakdown of the 31-day FCT.
A Health and Disability Commission report released earlier this month into non-surgical cancer service delivery by the Southern District Health Board — now HNZ Southern — between 2016 and 2022 found hundreds of people had been harmed by excessive wait times.
Poor clinical governance systems, inadequate quality control measures and a poor relationship between doctors and management combined to create a service which in 2021 ranked last and second-last out of 20 health districts for treating cancer patients within the 31 and 62-day targets.
It was Ms Vining’s initial complaint about Southern cancer care that sparked the report.
In 2018 an SDHB letter told her husband Blair Vining that he had an expected 12-week waiting time to be seen by an oncologist regarding his bowel cancer diagnosis, after he had already been informed that he had about six to eight weeks to live.
He died in 2019, but Ms Vining has continued to advocate for better care, and is a leading figure in the building of the Southland Charity Hospital.
In her complaint to the Ombudsman, Ms Vining said she believed HNZ was deliberately withholding information previously publicly available on the Ministry of Health website.
"We can no longer tell if Southern cancer patients are seeing a specialist within the clinically safe timeframes and if their treatment is occurring within the clinically appropriate timeframes," she said.
Ms Vining also wrote to HNZ, raising issues with the response she had received.
The information requested was supplied to HNZ by the former DHBs and would not impose an administrative burden to supply, she said.
"This information is critical to understanding the performance and is of huge public interest."
A HNZ spokesman told the Otago Daily Times a decision was made last year to publish monthly data on 12 public metrics, including cancer care as measured by the 31-day target.
"Data for 62-day faster cancer treatment is still collected but it is no longer published proactively because it is not a measure within our accountability documents."
HNZ did not say why this change had occurred.
